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While We’re Waiting… Trying to get into the Indians’ off-season

While We’re Waiting serves as the early morning gathering of WFNY-esque information for your viewing pleasure. Have something you think we should see? Send it to our tips email at tips@waitingfornextyear.com.

Comparing Swisher to… Pujols? “Let’s focus on the offense. Pujols certainly owns the power edge, outhomering Swisher and producing 80 extra-base hits to Swisher’s 60. Pujols did play in a tougher home run park, but it’s worth noting that Swisher never received a home run advantage from Yankee Stadium: In his four years with the Yankees, he actually hit more home runs on the road (59 to 46, including 13 to 11 in 2012). Swisher’s big edge over Pujols comes from drawing walks — 25 more in 2012 and 59 more over the last two seasons. This gave Swisher a slight edge in on-base percentage in 2012 (an edge he held in 2011 as well). Pujols drew just 36 unintentional walks in 2012, continuing the deterioration in his on-base ability that we saw in 2011.” [Schoenfield/ESPN]

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“The quick and boring analysis is this: the Myers deal is a fair one, with obvious short-term upside. Between 2010-2011, Myers started 66 games, logging just under 440 innings. His FIP over that span compared with the FIPs of Max Scherzer, Wandy Rodriguez, Ricky Romero, and James Shields. A concern is that Myers didn’t start in 2012, and he’s 32 years old. His average fastball as a starter has declined from north of 91 to just north of 88. He just broke 91 as a reliever, but, we all know about relievers and velocity. Myers’ strikeout rate has dropped, and it even dropped further last year in the bullpen, so it’s unknown just how much gas Myers has left in the tank. That’s why he wound up being so affordable, even for a team like Cleveland. He could be an effective innings-eater, or he could be a guy who used to be an effective innings-eater in the past.” [Sullivan/FanGraphs]

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“This is the biggest travesty that’s taking place in this league, and every black coach is well aware of it,” said one anonymous African-American assistant for an AFC team. “They don’t promote you from running backs coach or receivers coach to offensive coordinator. When guys do get coordinator titles, they have to be position coaches at the same time, and they don’t get paid as much as other coordinators, because they’re not the play-callers. And in a lot of cases, guys believe they’re really there for locker-room reasons, to ‘take care of’ the minority players.” [Silver/Yahoo Sports]

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“Look, the Nick Swisher signing, the Mark Reynolds signing and now the Brett Myers signing… are these moves enough to put the Indians in the same class as the Tigers? On paper, probably not, and we have plenty of time in the coming days and weeks for further analysis and soon-to-be-obliterated predictions. But suffice to say there is risk in giving a 32-year-old Swisher the largest free-agent contract in club history and adding Reynolds’ 32.6 percent strikeout rate (then parlaying that with Stubbs’ similarly frightening strikeout tendencies) and converting Myers back to starting work (in the AL, no less).

But if you’re an Indians fan, you certainly have to be encouraged to see them doling out some dollars to take those risks, rather than orchestrating another major rebuild just three years after the last rebuild didn’t really build much. Fact is, this is not an ownership/front office group that has ever punted on, say, a five-year window in order to save money and reap draft picks, as some other small markets have been prone to do. And while STO was not exactly a YES-like revenue-generator, we can certainly see, in retrospect, how it worked out for the Dolans, squeezing a major monetary commitment out of FOX Sports about six or seven years after negotiations over a renewal with FOX didn’t go where the Indians wanted them to go.” [Castrovince/MLB.com]

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“Working exclusively in relief, the 6-foot-3, 180-pound Haley has one of the best arms I saw during this past Arizona Fall League season. Pitching 11 innings, while making eight appearances for the Scottsdale Scorpions, Haley gave up only two hits. That alone is remarkable in what has become known as a league favoring hitters.

Using a fastball that sat at 95-96 mph and touched 98, plus a curveball he threw in the mid-80s, Haley had hitters completely off balance. He threw an occasional slider that changed hitters’ eye levels as well. Haley showed he knows how to pitch. He relied on his two-seam sinker to induce ground balls and keep himself out of trouble. He was economical in his quest for outs, but he didn’t always look for a strikeout. He struck out only three batters. He walked four.” [Pleskoff/MLB.com]